 Social norms and energy conservation in ChinaLibo Wu and Yang Zhou Resource and Energy Economics, 2025, vol. 82, issue C Abstract: This paper investigates how social norms influence energy conservation behaviors in China. Through a field experiment, we demonstrate that simply providing social comparison information can lead to significant energy reductions, even when the potential consumption and monetary gains from energy savings are limited. Specifically, energy consumption was reduced by 0.42 kWh, sufficient to meet a household’s daily energy needs for lighting. Our findings further indicate that this conservation effect is only significant for households using convenient payment schemes (quick-pay) via other digital platforms, which only offer monetary costs without other information. Hence, attention and information on energy consumption are relatively lacking for these households. This result reveals the potential mechanism of social norms as a reminder, drawing users’ attention to their energy consumption behaviors. This study offers valuable insights into the application and mechanism of social norms, emphasizing the importance of providing additional reminder information as auto- and quick-pay schemes become more prevalent. Keywords: Social norms; Energy consumption; Field experiment; Attention; Information (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:resene:v:82:y:2025:i:c:s0928765525000156 DOI: 10.1016/j.reseneeco.2025.101491 Access Statistics for this article Resource and Energy Economics is currently edited by J. F. Shogren and S. Smulders More articles in Resource and Energy Economics from Elsevier |
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